Wow, I just had to tell everyone this
I tried a simple verlet experiment in flash player 9 beta, and check this out

I had 100 particles on screen
used brute force for collision detection O(n^2)
did collision checking 5 times per frame

and my framerate--between 30 to 40 fps
WOW

it's kinda late now, but I'll post an example later
make sure to download flash player 9